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EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of July 2020

Good afternoon! I am once again eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation, this time because I’d prefer to wait until I can safely travel rather than taking a dull staycation in my Stockholm apartment. What that means for you lovely people is that you get summer content dev diaries! Let’s get right into it!

dd_indochina.png


Those of you who know me even slightly will be aware that I love all things South-East Asia (SEA). After 2.5 years on the project, I finally have the opportunity to create the SEA map rework of my dreams. Shown above is Mainland SEA. Burma/Myanmar is excluded from the map rework as I feel that the treatment I gave it during the development of Dharma still holds up. There will certainly be new content for nations in that region however, including what another dev fondly described as the “Shan mission stick” when we played MP this weekend.

The country setup has not been radically altered. The only new additions to the 1444 setup are the tribes inhabiting what is today the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I have, however, added many new provinces and increased the total development of the region significantly. According to the logs, the indo_china_region now contains 64 provinces with 542 total development. Note that these numbers, like all numbers presented in dev diaries, are not final. I’m especially satisfied with how Lan Na fits into its 5-province state, bordered on its west by impassable terrain. Speaking of impassable terrain, the Annamite Range now separates Vietnam from much of Laos, making Dai Viet a drastically more defensible nation.

A design goal for Mainland SEA nations in the 1.31 update is to emphasize vassal play and the development of capital super-cities. We’ll talk about various ways that this will be achieved another time, but one prerequisite for the goal is having nations to vassalize:


dd_releasables.png


Several releasable nations now have cores on territory held in 1444 by Lan Xang and Dai Viet. These nations actually already exist in the game files, but are very rarely seen in 1.30 due to their lack of cores. Unfortunately there aren’t really any sensible ways that I’ve found to divide Ayutthaya or Khmer, though in Ayutthaya’s case Sukhothai can still serve as a vassal to which you can feed your Thai provinces.


dd_culture.png


I’ve also taken a look at culture groups in the region. Central Thai and Northern Thai are now simply “Thai”, which belongs to the Siamese culture group that it shares with Lao and Shan. Countries in this culture group are able to form Siam, though Ayutthaya can only do so via its new mission tree. The “Indochinese” culture group is admittedly fairly arbitrary, but does serve to encompass regions of “natural” Vietnamese expansion on their “nam tiến” (southward advance). Cham has been moved to this group to reflect that we no longer equate culture and language.


dd_siam.png


Next week we’ll take a similar look at Maritime SEA - modern Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of scripted content you can expect plenty of historical events, mission trees, disasters, government reforms, estate privileges, and more from the 1.31 update. We’ll get to these in later weeks, but for now that’s all I have to say. Until next time, have a good week!
 
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SE Asia isn't a region I've ever played in, so this content overhaul will likely get me into it finally :)

@neondt Either is fine, but for the sake of satisfying my curiosity, will this be a free patch like 1.24 Japan, an Immersion Pack, or a full-fledged DLC?
 
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Still no plans for a Ming mission tree. During the development of the Manchu patch I considered whether it would be worthwhile to create one, but ultimately decided against it in favour of allocating time for the Korean mission tree. My reasoning was that there's very little design space for Ming missions because they're already so incredibly large and they have Celestial Reforms fulfilling a very similar purpose right from the start. I stand by that reasoning. In addition, it's only me on content design right now and if a Ming mission tree is going to be made it should ideally be made by someone who actually enjoys playing as Ming - I do not.

you never thought trying to split Ming into houses? Similar to Japan or HRE?
 
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Finally, ah, finally...

The time finally is here. Can't wait to see what you do with Indonesia. Here's hoping for at least more province (so Kalimantan is no longer a pie chart), more culture (Sundanese, Batak, etc.), and more tag.
Because this is, I assume, a free update, I won't expect unique mechanic, but I hope you give a look to the mandala government type and give something unique to it. I also hope sea nomad (Orang Laut, Bajau etc.) get some representation (either mechanic, event, or something else).

I don't know if I agree with moving Cham to Indochina culture, as I understand it, they are very similar to their austronesian brethren (they've became muslim at this period, just like Malays, a lot of royal marriage with malays and javanese, their royal refugee become elite in Atjeh Sultanate, etc.), but I can see the benefit from gameplay perspective.

I wish there is flavor pack, but if this is free update, then I don't think we'll get one. Still, I am hyped with whatever update this region will get. Can't wait to find out more!
 
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you never thought trying to split Ming into houses? Similar to Japan or HRE?

Ming China didn't really work like that, I can't see a way to split up Ming that wouldn't be very ahistorical. Outside of maybe representing some of the south-western regions as semi-autonomous in some way. But no plans for that right now.
 
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SE Asia isn't a region I've ever played in, so this content overhaul will likely get me into it finally :)

@neondt Either is fine, but for the sake of satisfying my curiosity, will this be a free patch like 1.24 Japan, an Immersion Pack, or a full-fledged DLC?

That's not something I can reveal right now :)
 
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We're not likely start going above 5, but we now aim for 4-5 provinces per state. 3-province states should be rare.

Interesting. I do think 4-5 hits the spot perfectly, but given how hard it is to confine historical areas based to only 4 or 5 provinces it will inevitably always lead to having many 3 province areas as well, which is okay, but can be very tedious vs having a few 6 province areas that could help smooth out to get the balance to be closer in between.
 
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Good afternoon! I am once again eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation, this time because I’d prefer to wait until I can safely travel rather than taking a dull staycation in my Stockholm apartment. What that means for you lovely people is that you get summer content dev diaries! Let’s get right into it!

View attachment 597891

Those of you who know me even slightly will be aware that I love all things South-East Asia (SEA). After 2.5 years on the project, I finally have the opportunity to create the SEA map rework of my dreams. Shown above is Mainland SEA. Burma/Myanmar is excluded from the map rework as I feel that the treatment I gave it during the development of Dharma still holds up. There will certainly be new content for nations in that region however, including what another dev fondly described as the “Shan mission stick” when we played MP this weekend.

The country setup has not been radically altered. The only new additions to the 1444 setup are the tribes inhabiting what is today the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I have, however, added many new provinces and increased the total development of the region significantly. According to the logs, the indo_china_region now contains 64 provinces with 542 total development. Note that these numbers, like all numbers presented in dev diaries, are not final. I’m especially satisfied with how Lan Na fits into its 5-province state, bordered on its west by impassable terrain. Speaking of impassable terrain, the Annamite Range now separates Vietnam from much of Laos, making Dai Viet a drastically more defensible nation.

A design goal for Mainland SEA nations in the 1.31 update is to emphasize vassal play and the development of capital super-cities. We’ll talk about various ways that this will be achieved another time, but one prerequisite for the goal is having nations to vassalize:


View attachment 597892

Several releasable nations now have cores on territory held in 1444 by Lan Xang and Dai Viet. These nations actually already exist in the game files, but are very rarely seen in 1.30 due to their lack of cores. Unfortunately there aren’t really any sensible ways that I’ve found to divide Ayutthaya or Khmer, though in Ayutthaya’s case Sukhothai can still serve as a vassal to which you can feed your Thai provinces.


View attachment 597893

I’ve also taken a look at culture groups in the region. Central Thai and Northern Thai are now simply “Thai”, which belongs to the Siamese culture group that it shares with Lao and Shan. Countries in this culture group are able to form Siam, though Ayutthaya can only do so via its new mission tree. The “Indochinese” culture group is admittedly fairly arbitrary, but does serve to encompass regions of “natural” Vietnamese expansion on their “nam tiến” (southward advance). Cham has been moved to this group to reflect that we no longer equate culture and language.


View attachment 597894

Next week we’ll take a similar look at Maritime SEA - modern Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of scripted content you can expect plenty of historical events, mission trees, disasters, government reforms, estate privileges, and more from the 1.31 update. We’ll get to these in later weeks, but for now that’s all I have to say. Until next time, have a good week!
Would you be so kind please to tell me if possible when the bug fixers will return to work? I am interested because the diplo macro bug makes playing aggressively in Europe, especially near or in the HRE a nightmare in the early mid game, when there are plenty of tags.

I'd like to know so I can at least rest in peace if it will take more than 2/3 weeks instead of checking daily the forum for news.

Thank you.
 
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Oooh, vassal feed! Great to see impassable terrain to give explanation to the Vietnam border. Will there be change to a tributary mechanism or acceptance to represent Ming's tributaries in Malacca or the Philippines?
 
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Would you be so kind please to tell me if possible when the bug fixers will return to work? I am interested because the diplo macro bug makes playing aggressively in Europe, especially near or in the HRE a nightmare in the early mid game, when there are plenty of tags.

I'd like to know so I can at least rest in peace if it will take more than 2/3 weeks instead of checking daily the forum for news.

Thank you.

I can tell you that you shouldn't expect a patch within 2/3 weeks at least. Sorry I can't provide any further information.
 
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And we definitely need SEA unit models! I hope devs add new unit models for SEA even it is free patch. Maybe only releasing contents pack..
 
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Ming China didn't really work like that, I can't see a way to split up Ming that wouldn't be very ahistorical. Outside of maybe representing some of the south-western regions as semi-autonomous in some way. But no plans for that right now.

I see. Just do think that nice vassal system is oftenly way more interesting then huge blobs. Like it worked out well with Japan and Timurids. I have no clue how Ming worked, but just suggested. On that note, I really hope in future, maybe in EU5 you'll make more involved vassal system. I think more involved Government system and vassal system could make eu4 a bit more then Blob game. But I don't complain, I love eu4 tbh xP

Also, thanks for reply
 
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@neondt pls, if You have troubles gathering info ask people who research those things, instead of for example making OPMs in Tây Nguyên Cham...

It's not that hard to look up some things, ayutthaya had several divisions, mandala style. Khmer is the only problematic one. It's either Thai burned all sources or they were most centralized, absolutist state in the region.
1594131337408.png
 
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Oooh, vassal feed! Great to see impassable terrain to give explanation to the Vietnam border. Will there be change to a tributary mechanism or acceptance to represent Ming's tributaries in Malacca or the Philippines?

No planned changes to the tributary mechanic as such, but I have added an event to the Ming Crisis disaster. After one of the Mingplosion events happens, nations that no longer border Ming will have the option to stop paying tribute. AI will always decide to abandon Ming. The prevents things like a large SEA power still paying tribute to a Ming that only owns a handful of provinces in northern China, as well as to punish Ming a bit more when they lose huge amounts of their territory.

I've given some thought to whether Malacca should even be a Ming tributary in 1444. I've decided to keep it as it is for now, but not far into our time period Malacca asked for Ming intervention against a naval invasion from Ayutthaya - Ming promised nothing. After the voyages of Zheng He, Ming becomes extremely reluctant to get involved in SEA.
 
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I can tell you that you shouldn't expect a patch within 2/3 weeks at least. Sorry I can't provide any further information.

Thats a shame. Is there like a list of problems that the developers are aware of and are attempting to fix? As then I might bother reporting a few bugs if they aren't brought to your teams attention.

I remember for example a game like Minecraft having an entire website dedicated to bug reports and developers every now and then commenting on them, similarly Github has a feature in this regard as well.

* Problems that come to mind are large AI nations generally always being in debt and thus being non-reliable allies, which can never be called into a offensive war.
* The AI spamming the coastal defense buildings everywhere they have a coastline
* Mary of Burgundy dying in a very short period after becoming a personal union and thus instantly being annexed, leading to a whole load of problems when you are at war with burgundy and the succession happens
 
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Do you have any plans to include any of Polynesia in this patch? Any plans to add Tonga, the Maori, or the Hawaiian states?

I'm super excited to hear more about the new vassal features in this patch! Glad to see SEA getting love.
 
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Please, remember this is a Dev Diary on content in South East Asia and Neondt has already said he had no information to share on bug fixing at this point.

So please stay on topic.
 
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